Pokerstars Collects Over $130k in Rake From Sunday Million

Published on January 28th, 2019 8:12 pm EST

Yesterday marked the first day that the Sunday Million on Pokerstars featured a buy-in of $109, down from the traditional entry fee of $215.

Pokerstars said that they were dropping the buy-in in order to increase the size of the field and make it more friendly to weekend casual players.

This strategy worked, as today's tournament ended up receiving a total of 15,550 entries, which made the prize pool an even $1.55 million. There were 12,458 unique entries as well as a total of 3,092 re-entries.

While Pokerstars pushed the move to a lower buy-in of $109 as a way to benefit players, the reality is that it was a great way to increase the rake on the event.

The $109 buy-in meant that Pokerstars collected a total of $1,689,500 in buy-ins from the event, while the prize pool was $1,555,000.

This meant that Pokerstars collected a total of $134,500 in rake from the event, which was almost equal to the first place prize money of $136,892.99.

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It is certainly Pokerstars' right to raise rake anyway that they see fit.

There are, however, great alternatives if you are looking to play in Sunday tournaments on other sites.

Partypoker, for instance, has their "Super Sunday" slate of tournaments that includes a number of events with very decent guarantees, such as the "Sunday Bounty Hunter" with $150,000 guaranteed and the "Sunday Main Event" with $100,000 guaranteed.

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In the end, the vast majority of people aren't going to be scared away by Pokerstars continuing to collect more rake from events such as the "Sunday Million". They know this very well, which is why they made the move in the first place.

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Filed Under: Online Poker Rooms